In June 2016 the board was required to create a Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) for health and social care, planning out how the area will close the three gaps posing challenges to the sustainability of health services.

The plan includes reductions in inequalities in health; understanding how to reduce the longer-term costs of health and social care from increasing demands on services; and reducing local variations in quality of services.

By Nilfanion [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons Louise Miller, Strategic Director, Christchurch and East Dorset Councils had said: “We are positive about the opportunity that the strategy provides”.

The strategy had been planned as a response to the decrease in the working age population. Men and women are expected to live between 65 to 70 years old. Both better than England’s average. However, in rural areas the years are lower at 57 and 61 respectively. Alcohol, smoking and obesity are some of the leading causes towards the population decrease.